Kylie Lang: Tech giants profit off notorious teen crims while we suffer

If we take away their “look at me” tool, who knows, some of these young criminals might actually get a job, writes Kylie Lang.

Screen grabs of posts to social media from Brisbane’s Northside gang.

If algorithms are so smart, why don’t they identify braggart posts by kids stealing cars so tech giants can boot these criminals off social media for good?

Once you’ve posted and boasted, you’re gone – banned from TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and any other platform used to glorify crime.

That would be a supremely effective way to pull these punks into line and help the rest of us breathe easier.

People battling uphill against the youth crime crisis – including police officers, social workers and politicians – agree that bragging about exploits online is a key driver of committing an offence in the first place.

Take away their “look at me” tool, you diminish their motivation. Who knows, some of them might become so bored they actually get a job.

Screen grabs of posts from the Northside gang with an allegedly stolen car.

But no, sadly for our society – and acutely the victims and their families – targeting criminals doesn’t fit the business model for tech companies.

Quite simply, there is no profit in it.

Contrast this to the feverish work being done to refine algorithms so they get even better at telling us what to spend our money on.

This week I thought about buying a new car. I’ve had mine for eight years so figured maybe it’s time to consider a hybrid (I’m not ready for fully electric, sorry not sorry Elon).

After consulting Google, I’m now being bombarded with advertisements and related content I don’t want.

A degree of common sense has kicked in, sad as it is.

Why would I replace my 2017 model, which performs perfectly well, with a shiny new one when I can be almost 100 per cent certain some kid will try to steal it?

Why make my garage – and my family and my home – a target?

The Queensland Government, with the best of intentions, has introduced legislation making it an offence to post to boast.

Image from @northsidecrab Instagram with an Audi.

As this newspaper has reported, up to 13 young criminals a week are being charged with bragging online about stealing cars.

I’d really like to know how many of these kids are being slapped with the maximum penalty of two years behind bars?

Knowing how delicately the courts treat our young offenders, I’m guessing none.

Moreover, criminal lawyer Tom Clelland says post and boast offences are incredibly difficult to prosecute because obtaining evidence from social media giants is a problem.

“What you’d really need to be able to prove is that ‘Person X’ as opposed to ‘Person Y’ was the person who put the video online,” Mr Clelland told the ABC.

“We’ve seen in recent months that it is a very difficult undertaking to have these large companies that are multinational in nature comply with domestic laws.”

You don’t say?

In June this year, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant convened a roundtable discussion in Sydney aimed at better tackling cyber-enabled youth offending.

The National Youth Crime Online Roundtable brought together legal experts, community representatives, tech industry and law enforcement agencies.

“We have witnessed instances where social media is not only used to glorify criminal behaviour, but also to compound its impact across different communities, fostering a concerning ‘network effect’ of imitation crimes,” Ms Inman Grant said.

Images posted by the notorious Northside gang.

“Victims of crime may also experience intensified trauma where their experience is perpetuated more broadly through social media.

“We must establish innovative ways to boost the detection and removal of youth crime material online to prevent this behaviour going viral,” she said.

The response from Meta – which owns Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp – was as predictable as it was disheartening.

Mia Garlick, Meta’s policy director for Australia, said: “While we have clear policies prohibiting people from engaging in criminal activity or publicising crime on our services, we welcome further collaboration with industry, law enforcement, the community sector and academia to tackle this issue.”

Clear policies prohibiting the publicising of crime?

Here’s what’s clear – existing policies are not working.

Juveniles see social media as a joy ride, while their crimes intensify and innocent people are killed because of them.

Governments, law enforcement, educators and parents can only do so much – and when tech giants refuse to use their infinite capabilities for good, then we are just tinkering at the edges.

Kylie Lang is associate editor of The Courier-Mail
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LOVE

The temporary suspension of Best Practice Industry Conditions by the Crisafulli Government. We need to get work sites moving again and stop union perks on government projects. Make it permanent, I say.

LOATHE

A British TV presenter questioning why the Princess of Wales (who recently finished cancer treatment) “has aged so much”. “Isn’t she only 42? Is she a smoker? It’s the only explanation,” she wrote on X. Shame on you Narinder Kaur.